Management

Chapter 1: THE CHANGING PARADIGM OF MANAGEMENT

Management is the attainment of organisational goals in an effective and efficient manner through planning, organising, leading and controlling organisational resources.

The four management functions:

Planning – defines where the organization wants to be in the future and how to get there. Defining goals for future organisational performance and deciding on the tasks and use of resources needed to attain them. Good planning involves understanding the enterprise’s environment and how it is changing.

Organising – involves the assignment of tasks, the grouping of tasks into departments, and the allocation of resources to departments.

Leading – is the use of influence to motivate employees to achieve organisational goals.

Controlling – means monitoring employees’ activities, determining whether the organization is on target towards its goals, and making corrections as necessary. It is now more emphasis on training employees to monitor and correct themselves (empowering). People at all levels will make the right decisions if they are provided with the appropriate information.

An organization is a social entity that is directed and deliberately structured. A social entity is made up of two or more people. Goal directed means being designed to achieve some outcome. Deliberately structured means that the tasks are divided.

Organisational effectiveness is the degree to which the organization achieves a stated goal.

Organisational efficiency refers to the amount of resources used to achieve an organisational goal.

The necessary skills for managing a department or an organization can be summarised in just three categories: conceptual, human and technical.

Management skills:

Conceptual skill is the ability to see the organization as a whole and the relationship among its parts. Knowing where one’s department fits into the total organization and how the organization fits into the industry, the...